The Giver of Stars

by Jojo Moyes

This book is supposedly based on real events.

It takes place in Kentucky in the depression area. The story starts with a young English woman who longs to escape her family.  She marries a handsome young American who has come to England.  Everyone thinks it will be an ideal marriage.

The young man is travelling with his father.  On the voyage back to America the newlyweds share a cabin with the man's father.  Why??  The young man is shy about doing anything amourous with his father nearby.

The young woman had imagined she would be going to a city in America but she is actually going into the Kentucky mountains.  The father-in-law runs a coal mine.  He treats his employees as slaves and safety measures are lacking.

When they arrive in Kentucky the couple live with the husband's father.  As the father sleeps in the next room the young man again declines intimacy.  The young woman is puzzled.

One day some woman announce that the President's wife has started a mobile library program to help promote literacy in America.  They are looking for women to ride into the mountains to take books to people.  The young bride feels she has nothing to do and despite the objection of her father-in-law she volunteers to be one of the Librarians.

She then gets involved with a group of women who will become her close friends:Margery, the daughter of a moonshiner, member of one family in a decades long feud with another local family.
She is a very independent woman and teaches the other women the routes through the mountains.  Other members of the group include Izzy a young crippled girl and a black girl who trained in a black library and is the administrator of the collection.

The women ride through all weather to deliver their books and their service is much appreciated.  Alice, the main character, initially feels an outsider but through her work is welcomed by the people she visits.  She sees how tough life is for the mountain people and befriends them, for e.g. reading to a dying man. Alice starts working longer and longer hours as she cannot bear to go home.  One day she gives some dolls that belonged to her deceased mother-in-law to some poor local girls.  When the father-in-law discovers what she has done he beats her up.  Bruised and battered she leave the family home and goes to live with Margery.

Margery is carrying on an anonymous campaign warning locals that Alice's father wants to buy they out of their property to expand his mining operations.  When there is a flood one of the mine's holding ponds burst and it is Margery who tells people about this.  This activity and the fact that she is housing his daughter-in-law infuriates the father-in-law and he is doing everything he can to discredit Margery and shut down the library service.  Most of the books and magazines they deliver are classics, comic books, cookbooks etc.  There is one "facutal" book about sex information .  It turns out to be a popular read in the community.  Alice's father-in-law accuses the librarians of corrupting the community by distributing this book.  Alice is so naive she doesn't even know what it means to have sex and that it is unusual that her marriage has never been consummated.

Then, one day a man, from the family Margery's family had the feud with, is found dead with a library book on his chest.  She is arrested for murder even though she is pregnant (out of wedlock).
The trial starts and it appears she will be found guilty.
However, Alice's husband suggests to her that the dead man's daughters, who are reclusive, should be interviewed.  One of the girls, who is heavily pregnant, comes to the trial and tells the judge that her father had a library book and was anxious to return it to town.  She speculates he must have slipped on the ice and died from injuries from the fall.

When asked why she didn't report her father missing it is obvious she did not like him (is it he who got her pregnant)?  Ironically the book the father was found with was Little Women. Based on this testimony Margery is released and reunited with her baby and her lover.

The book starts with Margery encountering the girls father.  He tries to attack Margery.  In defence she hits him with a book and rides off as fast as she can.  She doesn't check to see if he got up....

The book has a happily ever after ending.... Alice's marriage is annulled.  Her husband marries another woman, Alice marries a local man she has fallen in love with and Margery marries her lover.  The black Librarian moves back to the city where she worked as a librarian with her brother who was injured in the mine (and abandoned by the  mine owner).

The puzzling part of the book is why Alice's first husband, who seemed to marry her willingly, then seemed to have no interest in her sexually.  I thought he might be gay but he married another woman.  Perhaps his second wife would initially not have been acceptable to his father, but after all that happened the old man was happy to have a compliant daughter-in-law.

The story was action packed.  The author did a great job of describing the hardships of travelling through the mountains in all seasons and the lives of the locals.  A very interesting read.

The Giver of Stars by Amy Lowell
Hold your soul open for my welcoming.
Let the quiet of your spirit bathe me
With is clean and rippled coolness.,
That, loose-limbed and weary, I find rest,
Outstretched upon your peace, as on a bed of ivory.

The Testaments

by Margaret Atwood

This is the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, it was just announced as a joint winner of the Mann Booker Prize this year.

I recently re-read The Handmaid's Tale.  I found it interesting, and disturbing yet again.   The ideas Atwood presents in this book in terms of the rituals, sex scenes with the commanders, the handmaids and the wives are absolutely chilling.

I was wondering how she would follow up the first book and I have to say The Testaments was different, perhaps even better in some ways.  It is the story of three women, whose lives are intertwined.  It is a story and a bit of a mystery novel.  We find that a child was secreted away from Gilead and taken to Canada.  The baby's picture is plastered around Gilead and the baby is being vigourously sought as it would be a coup if Gilead could recapture her.  There are women called angels who go into Canada, supposedly to preach about Gilead but they are actually spies seeking information about the baby and about people who help women and children escape from Gilead.

One of the characters is a young woman who is shocked at the death of the people she thought were her parents.  She is shocked to learn that she is that baby.  We also meet a young girl who is basically ignored by her father and his new wife, especially when they have a child by a handmaid.  She is being groomed to be married but convinces the officials, including Aunt Lydia that she is committed to life as an Aunt.  She does not want to get married.  Another friend of hers also becomes an aunt (she was traumatized by being sexually abused by her father, a highly regarded dentist).  We meet Aunt Lydia who is probably the most powerful of the aunts and learn that Gilead has records of all women, children born, etc.  Aunt Lydia is secretly writing a journal about what has happened in Gilead. If she was found out she would be hung.

As the book progresses we learn that the main character in Handmaid's Tale (Offred), was able to escape to Canada.  The daughter she had with her husband also survived. At the end of the novel Offred and her two children are re-united.  Eventually the notes written by Aunt Lydia are found but no one knows that she is the one who wrote them.

I enjoyed the way Atwood developed the story and how the various people's lives intertwined.  I am not sure why Aunt Lydia did what she did.

The books starts with the person who is Aunt Lydia and other professional women being rounded up.  In life she was a respected judge. Rather than fighting she decides to commit to becoming part of the Gilead administration.  This was the most disturbing and intriguing part of the story to me, that someone who was a defender of the law and should be committed to human rights would abandon all that to survive and in fact become an architect and perpetrator of the vile Gilead empire.  And, in the end why did she write these notes?  To apologize for what she was part of?  As a lesson for the future?